Bedtime Story
by LittleMissMothball
Summary: Twenty years after the deaths of Johnny and Dally, greaser girl Stacy ends up telling her children about her childhood. After learning the dark past of their family six year old Dennis and sixteen year old Daniel will never look at their parents the same way again.


Stacy's POV

"Momma, tell me a bedtime story," my youngest son demanded. I looked down at him and his sleepy gray eyes. "Tell 'bout when you were a kid."

My oldest son, Daniel, sat across the table from me. I was helping him with an English project and couldn't abandon him. "Well, uh," I started to franticly debate which needed me more at the moment when my husband scooped Dennis up, started one of his "did I ever tell you about…" stories, and walked down the hallway.

"Danny, what is your project about, and please tell me you didn't wait until the last minute again." I begged looking at the blank sheet of paper in front of him.

"I still have two weeks. It's a big project, I just make notes tonight."

"So why am I here? You know how to make a story plot."

"Momma, I'm sixteen we don't write stories we write essays. Ms. Valence is making us write about our family so she can get to know us and see if she went to school with our parents." he muttered bitterly.

"Oh fun. So basically you want to hear a bedtime story?"

"No, I want the real stories. Not the sugar coated ones you guys tell Dennis."

"Very well. you want to truth, I'll tell you the truth." I leaned back in my chair and tried to find a good place to start.

"I walked into the house, plopped my books down, took off my jacket, and made myself at home. It was hard to tell if I was the only one there because after school it was always pretty silent here until Soda and Darry would get home, and the door was never locked so I couldn't very well use that as a clue. "Hey, Pony?" I called out from the living room, "You home?"

He poked his head around the corner but didn't say anything. He had been acted weird all week and he didn't even come to school today, not that he's done much there the last few days. "You sick? How come you wasn't as school today?"

"No," he muttered and walked back out of the room. Boy,_ that _was informative. I had lived in Tulsa almost a year and this was the first time I can remember him not being at school, not to mention there was cross-country practice today and track was his life.

"Yeah, 'kay. Sure," I muttered under my breath. I'm a member of this gang, and this gang is a family. I thought bitterly of how it was only fair that I got to know too. Pony was my best friend and I'd be damned if I was gonna let him lie to me.

I was still working on my homework when Soda walked through front door. I jumped up and slammed a fist into his left arm. "What was that for?" he demanded but kept his voice down. Soda never kept his voice down like that unless something big was going on. My response was to punch him again.

"Y'all never tell me nothing. It's not fair man. Tell me what's going on," I growled keeping my voice low too.

"You don't know?" he asked uncomfortably. "Three years ago today this gang lost two members."

"In a rumble?" I asked truly puzzled. Pony never told me. No one ever told me anything.

"No," Soda whispered and raced past me before I could dig up more of the dark past. I sat down on the coach. No one even told me about other members. Didn't they trust me?

I finished my homework and avoided human contact until Darry started to cook diner. I raced over to help him; I hoped to get some more information while I did. He complained about work, I complained about my alcoholic caretaker, we laughed about the same bitter jokes, and we went ahead and started to work on tomorrow's morning cake while we were still in the kitchen. Darry was like a big brother to me, so I hoped he would tell me what happened.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" I asked in a moment of silent transition.

"No one likes to talk about it. No one wants to talk about two kids dying." he responded without me having to explain further. That's the great thing about Darry, we think alike, which was good because that meant we could understand each other. "One was your age," he whispered.

"Pony's real torn up?"

Darry looked at me for a minute, walked out of the room and came back a few minutes later with a stack of papers in him hands. "Don't tell Pony about this. Read it. I'll finish cooking."

I looked down at the papers, I knew the handwriting from passing notes at school, and I knew I shouldn't be reading it. Yet I really wanted to understand him, and I wanted to understand who these people who died were, so I read it anyway. And Danny you wont believe what those poor boys when through."

Daniel looked at me from across that table, "What? You gotta tell me, it's for my project."

"You have two weeks. I'll tell you more tomorrow."

"That's not fair." He muttered with a scowl.

"I never said it was fair. Go to bed; let your mind paint a picture of what you think happened. You're the one who asked for a bedtime story."

"I think this is why I never liked them."


End file.
